After nearly 20 years as the weekly voice of New York’s Catholic Church, the official newspaper of the archdiocese may become a monthly.

A spokesman for Edward Cardinal Egan said yesterday the archdiocese is considering cost-cutting moves that could include scaling back the frequency of Catholic New York, which has trumpeted the teachings of the most important Roman Catholic center in the nation.

“Catholic New York is being looked at in that context,” spokesman Joseph Zwilling said about a possible change. “We’re looking at different models from other dioceses and how they run their newspapers.”

Little is off-limits in Egan’s crusade to erase a multimillion-dollar deficit at the archdiocese.

Last month, he announced the closings of three Catholic elementary schools, one each in New York (Manhattan), Dutchess and Ulster counties.

Church administrators are also considering a series of mergers and cutbacks within the archdiocese headquarters, as well as a reorganization of several parishes.

Students, teachers and parents in Manhattan are still reeling from the shutdown of St. Bernard’s in Chelsea, a story reported in, among other newspapers, Catholic New York.

“Everyone thinks Catholic New York has been a good newspaper,” Zwilling said. “But as we’ve said all along, everything is subject to review at this point.”

Zwilling said he would leave it up to the paper’s critics to determine the effect such a move would have on its influence.

For years, the paper was a platform for John Cardinal O’Connor, who wrote a weekly editorial.

Launched in 1981 by Terence Cardinal Cooke, the newspaper, which is published at the archdiocese’s First Avenue Catholic Center, boasts a circulation of 136,000.